Cyrus Field’s Descendants - Diane Gravlee’s comprehensive list of Cyrus Field’s family and descendants, down to the seventh generation

The Brothers Field - Russell Carpenter’s history of the five brothers of the Field family who held among them a total of 10 academic and honorary degrees from Williams College.

Cyrus Field Family Portraits - images of paintings of Cyrus Field and his parents, wife, and sons, owned by Peter Christian Hall and Alix-Marie Hall, New York City-based siblings whose great-grandfather was Frederick Joseph Stone, Cyrus Field’s nephew

Submarine Cable Stamps and First Day Covers - includes Atlantic Cable 75th and 100th anniversary stamps and covers, Bill Glover’s extensive collection of cableship stamps and covers with information on each ship and the cables laid, and Bill’s history of Cable & Wireless, illustrated with original telegrams and covers.

On The Causes Of Failure Of Deep-Sea Cables by James Graves. Article on the failure of the 1865 Atlantic cable from the Journal of the Society of Telegraph-Engineers and Electricians, No. 51, Vol. XIII, 1884. The author was a cable engineer who supervised the manufacture of the 1865 cable and was later superintendent of the Valentia cable station where the recovered 1865 cable terminated.

Tiffany Cable Samples - if you’ve ever wondered about the source of all those Tiffany-marked samples of the 1858 cable which show up on eBay every few weeks, and whether or not they are genuine, here’s the story. (The cable samples are genuine; the certificates and boxes are vintage 1974, although authentic 1858 certificates are occasionally found).

Modern Telegraphy: some errors of dates of events and of statement in the history of telegraphy exposed and rectified / by Samuel F.B. Morse. Paris, June 1867. The link is to the Bibliothèque National de France; the text may be read on screen there, or downloaded.

Atlantic Sentinel - a book by Donald R. Tarrant on the history of transatlantic communications in Newfoundland

Bamfield Cable Station - the site in British Columbia of the Pacific Cable Board Cable Station, which served as the eastern terminus of the trans-pacific telegraph cable from 1901 to 1959. The facility is now the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre

Bay Roberts Cable Station - the 1910 cable station building in Newfoundland is now a local history museum. The museum’s website has many historic cable images.

Canso Cable Station - the Commercial Cable Rehabilitation Society had been revitalizing the former Commercial Cable trans-Atlantic relay station in Hazel Hill, Nova Scotia, but the building was demolished in 2017.

The Chapin Library at Williams College has an archive of Field family papers which includes material from Cyrus W. Field. Some images are on line, and the page also has links to other sources

ICPC - The International Cable Protection Committee. Links to submarine cable companies and suppliers; historical material in the Information section of the site. See also this page on ICPC souvenir items.

IEEE History Center - the (American) Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers website devoted to the preservation of electrical engineering history.

IET (formerly IEE) Archives - the archive of the (British) Institution of Engineering & Technology (The IET), which holds much material on early telegraphy, including the scrapbook of cable pioneer Jacob Brett, the papers of Sir Francis Ronalds, WF Cooke, Oliver Heaviside, and WH Preece, and a collection of drawings by EW Cooke on the 1858 Atlantic telegraph expedition. The archive website has a research guide to submarine telegraphy. Direct link to IET archives search.

Samuel Morse Historic Site at Locust Grove, Poughkeepsie - the house and grounds owned by Morse from 1851 to 1872, now a National Historic Landmark. The Morse Exhibit in the Visitor Center displays a number of Morse’s paintings, together with some telegraph and cable artifacts. Guided house tours are available, and there is free admission to the 150 acres of grounds running down to the Hudson River.

Mother Earth Mother Board - Neal Stephenson’s 1996 Wired Magazine article in which he follows the installation of a modern fiber optic cable over three continents and incidentally presents the history of communications cables. Note that not all researchers agree with his comments on Wildman Whitehouse.

Mumford Books in the UK has an excellent selection of technical and industrial books, plus prints and photographs, and can often locate material on submarine cables and telegraphy.

New Wireless Pioneers - Jim Kreuzer has supplied images of a number of rare items for the Atlantic Cable site. Now his own site is open, listing many books in the field of radio and telegraph history, and including regular catalog updates.

The Old Cable House - a Bed & Breakfast in Waterville, Ireland, housed in an original Commercial Cable Company building. The site has an interesting cable history section.

Porthcurno Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno, Cornwall, England. A major research resource, with an on-line catalog of the extensive archive of cable material from Cable & Wireless, many photographs, and information on visiting the museum.

SubmarineCableSystems.com - a directory site for the telecommunications, submarine cable system, and offshore service industries. Provides a good overview of the services available to the modern cable industry.

As the site passes its 21st anniversary,
I continue
to extend special thanks to Bill Glover,
who has been contributing time and material
to the project for much of that time, and to Stewart Ash, a cable consultant who is involved in both modern technology and historical research, for his many contributions.

Thanks also to Jim Jones, a cable industry veteran of many years, who has not
only
provided much of his own material,
but
has also
tracked down former
colleagues
and other cable workers
for
contributions to the site.